Considering Dr Keith H's thread over in 'X-Prize launches', with SS1 grounded it seems like this is a possible opportunity for another team to pull a serious upset. I'd love to see an Armadillo win and I'm sure there are a bunch of people in Canada pulling for Arrow and daVinci and also some for Starchaser. Anyone think this will slow Scaled down enough for someone else to jump ahead?

When Scaled had the landing gear problem back in December, it was almost 3 months before the next test flight. That may have been due to other things, but given Burt's methodical approach to things, his claim to not fly again until they understand what went wrong probably means a signficiant amount of down time. They also mention an additional test flight before any X-prize attempt...AND are they sticking with their 60-day notification of any attempt (not rules, but what they've said)?

Anway, we could easily be looking at a September test flight, and then a November prize attempt.

A number of teams have indicated they'll be flying actual hardware by the end of this summer. How much flight testing before an attempt is the open variable. I expect at least one other team to be in flight test by the time Scaled tries a prize flight. daVinci or Arrow probably...maybe ARCA, but not their actual vehicle... Armadillo could make a run at it, but John's stated numerous times he isn't paying for all the environmental studies required...

Look for Da Vinci to launch in August. Whether that's just a test launch or the real thing, we'll know pretty soon. I think the impetus on Da Vinci to take advantage of Scaled's delay might be worth taking some risks.

John did say that he might spend more time on Armadillo this year if Burt crashes, this seems close enough to qualify and as close as I want to see any of the manned vehicles get to crashing. I really think that the environmental stuff is going to be Armadillos biggest obstacle. Maybe if the Oklahoma spaceport gets their license in order soon that could change. I really don't know enough about the other teams to guess if they could pull off a manned flight soon but this seems to be exactly what is needed to make the X-Prize a closer competition.